Leave Aslan Alone!

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

There are some stories that should be approached with a certain humility.

C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia surely belong among them. They are not merely children’s adventure stories populated by talking animals, witches and enchanted wardrobes. They are among the most influential works of Christian imagination of the twentieth century, deliberately constructed around profound themes of creation, fall, redemption, sacrifice, resurrection and final judgment.

Which is why the announcement that Meryl Streep will voice Aslan in Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew is so disappointing.

Let me say immediately that the problem is not Meryl Streep. She is unquestionably one of the most accomplished actors of her generation. Gerwig has explained that she wanted someone with “gravitas” who could communicate “depth and pathos as well as joy and delight.” Those are admirable qualities to seek in Aslan.

But there is an elephant — or perhaps a lion — in the room.

Aslan is male.

That is not an incidental detail that can be changed as casually as the colour of his mane. C.S. Lewis repeatedly calls Aslan “he.” More importantly, Aslan is Lewis’s imaginative representation of the historical person of Jesus Christ within the world of Narnia. And Jesus was a man.

Lewis himself made this link explicit. Narnia was not constructed as a simple one-for-one allegory. Rather, Lewis imagined what the eternal Son of God might be like if he entered another world in another form. Writing to a child concerned that he loved Aslan more than Jesus, Lewis explained that the things the boy loved Aslan for doing and saying were “simply the things Jesus really did and said.”²

That is why Aslan dies sacrificially for the guilty Edmund and rises again. It is why he is the sovereign Lord of Narnia. And in The Magician’s Nephew, it is why Aslan sings Narnia into existence.

The biblical resonances are unmistakable. “Through him all things were made” (John 1:3). Christ is the one through whom God created the universe (Colossians 1:16). Lewis’s magnificent image of Aslan singing Narnia into existence is Christian theology transposed into imaginative literature.

So why deliberately give this unmistakably male Christ figure a female voice? It is difficult to regard the decision in isolation from a much broader cultural trend.

Western culture has become increasingly preoccupied with reinterpreting traditional stories through contemporary reimagining of gender and identity. Characters are gender-swapped. Established narratives are “reimagined.” Traditional categories are subverted, frequently with the implication that previous generations were somehow deficient for accepting such simple stereotypes.

Supporters of modern adaptation describe this as inclusion or creative reinterpretation. Critics commonly call it “woke.” Whatever terminology you prefer, the underlying pattern is undeniable: woke philosophy is increasingly being applied to older works, which are then remodelled to conform to present cultural norms.

Sometimes this produces interesting art. But there is an important difference between creating something new and rewriting something that has been passed down to us. If you want to create a female supreme lioness in a new fantasy universe, wonderful! Write the story. Build the world. Create the mythology. But don’t inject her into C.S. Lewis’s already established world.

Narnia already exists and it is ruled by a male lion who represents the historical God/man, Jesus Christ. The male Aslan is integral to this carefully constructed theological universe.

The tragedy is that The Magician’s Nephew offers filmmakers extraordinary material precisely because of that theology. It is one of Lewis’s most profoundly Christian stories. We witness the creation of Narnia, the entrance of evil into it and the beginnings of the great redemptive drama that will eventually lead to the Stone Table.

Yet Gerwig has spoken of approaching Narnia partly through the imagery of 1960s and 1970s rock music. She describes the film as having something of a “rock opera” sensibility and cites David Bowie as an important inspiration for Aslan’s visual presentation.

Perhaps the result will be visually spectacular; Gerwig is a talented filmmaker. But a female voiced Aslan undermines the whole theological basis of the story and risks turning it into a woke fairytale.

This is symptomatic of a larger trend within contemporary Western culture. We have inherited an extraordinary cultural heritage of literature, art, music and architecture but are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the predominantly Christian worldview that produced them. We want the fruit while often rejecting the tree.

Consequently, Christian works are sometimes retained as cultural artefacts while their theological distinctives are softened, reconstructed or translated into categories more congenial to contemporary ideology – and that is what makes the treatment of Aslan significant.

This is not simply an argument about whether a woman is capable of producing a sufficiently powerful lion’s voice. Of course she is. Nor is it an argument about the talent of Meryl Streep. It is about artistic fidelity.

Imagine remaking The Lord of the Rings and deciding that Tolkien’s conception of Gandalf needs ideological updating, perhaps rendering him as female or gay. Or imagine rendering Macbeth as a confused transgender in order to please modern audiences who might prefer something more complex and nuanced to Shakespeare’s original binary depiction.

At some point adaptation becomes appropriation. In Gerwig’s case, it also demonstrates extreme hubris as she assumes she can improve C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece by making it more appealing.

There is an irony here that Lewis himself might have appreciated. Our culture constantly celebrates “diversity,” yet sometimes it seems remarkably reluctant to allow voices from the past to remain genuinely different from ourselves.

True cultural diversity should include chronological diversity — the willingness to encounter authors whose assumptions are not ours and permit them to speak in their own voice from their own time.

Lewis does not need correcting. And Aslan does not need updating or re-gendering.

Perhaps the greatest tribute a filmmaker could pay to one of the most beloved works of Christian literature ever written would be something increasingly radical in our age: Just leave it alone!

Let Lewis be Lewis. And let Aslan be Aslan.

Comment